The invention relates to a payment-triggered audiovisual reproduction system.
These audiovisual reproduction systems are generally found in cafes or pubs. This type of system is composed of a sound reproduction machine usually called a jukebox linked to a monitor which displays video images or video clips. To do this, the jukebox is equipped with a compact video disk player and a compact video disk library and includes selection buttons which locate the titles of pieces of music that are available. Payment of a proper fee followed by one or more selections authorizes activation of the system with automatic loading in the player of the disk on which the selected piece is found. Subsequently, the desired audiovisual reproduction is played.
These systems, although allowing reliable and good quality reproduction, nevertheless have major defects. A first defect relates to the space necessary for storing the library; this consequently entails that the system will have large dimensions. Another defect of these systems relates to the mostly mechanical components using sophisticated techniques, which in turn, have high fault rates. Moreover, it is unusual for all the songs on a disk to be regularly heard, but unwanted songs cannot be eliminated from the disk, and the disk occupies physical space. Another problem is caused by the companies that manage and distribute these systems, placing in the circuit a limited number of identical disks and imposing a certain rotation on their customers. As a result, customers must wait when a disk is not available.